Monthly Archives January 2013

Strike Suit Zero is everything I wanted it to be

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Charles Spurr

For those that aren’t familiar with the name, Strike Suit Zero is a space-based ship combat action game. It was recently released by indie developer Born Ready Games and I picked it up on PC (via Steam) almost immediately. I had been following the development of this title since PAX Prime where I had seen a small demo being shown quietly in the walkway between the main expo hall floors. Of course, the problem with that is it leaves me with extremely high expectations for the final product. In the case of Strike Suit Zero, however, I am not disappointed at all. This is a game for serious fans of the space shooter genre, people that like transformable ships, firing swarms of missiles, or anyone with a PC and a pulse. Continue reading

Continuum – Occupy Wall Street in tiiiiiiiiiimmmmmmeeeeeeeee

Posted on January 30, 2013 by Nick Bergeron

I promise after this week I’ll lay off the time travel for a little while. Or maybe BEFORE this week! Whoooohhhhoooohhhoooo! Anyway, over the weekend I caught the first two episodes of Continuum, a Canadian series SyFy has picked up for rebroadcast. The first season is complete and has aired in Canada, and has already been renewed for a second season. Continue reading

Taking the Path of Exile Beta

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Jon Spengler

I’ve been on a serious action RPG kick. It might be because this cold has reduced my attention span into something more appropriate for a kitten, but the frantic clicking and feel-good gameplay of titles like Diablo 3 and Torchlight 2 is hitting the spot. I found out just 16 minutes before it was released that Path of Exile was entering an open beta and I couldn’t resist downloading it. It’s a free to play title that offers action RPG gameplay with a grittier atmosphere. But picking up a free to play game is like consenting when your friend asks you to “close your eyes and say ‘ahh’”. Is Path of Exile worth your time? Continue reading

Star Wars: Edge of the Empire

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Reuben Poling

All images from the Fantasy Flight website.

The confession that’s going to get me fired from this website: I’m not that into Star Wars. I sure don’t like dislike it, but I’ve never delved into the EU, can’t remember the names of any races besides Wookiees, Ewoks, and Twi’leks*, and just in general don’t have room in the withered black cockles of my heart for that particular fandom. In the circles I move in, this ranges from slightly odd but irrelevant to essentially leprosy, complete with pieces of my body falling off. After someone cuts them off.

*Twi’leks are the ones with backswept tentacle heads, right? If not, then I guess I just know Wookiees and Ewoks.

But when the question “Hey, we wanna try the new Star Wars tabletop?” was put before my weekly gaming group, I wasn’t gonna be a killjoy about it. We had a starter kit with pre-gen characters, a GM who’d run the adventure before, and no D&D to play, so why the hell not? Besides…I got to be a Wookiee. You can’t turn that down.

My First GM

Posted on January 25, 2013 by Hannah Craig

Role-play, like many other nerdy hobbies, is weird, sort of silly and incredibly difficult to explain to people who don’t partake. Like Magic the Gathering or an MMORPG, role-play is filled with odd rules (both written and unwritten), a massive amount of varied settings and so much in-lingo and terminology that it can sound like us RPers are talking in another language entirely.

Role-play is and has been for a long time, my favorite hobby. There’s something about it that I’ve never felt in other hobbies. There’s a freedom in it where you can lose yourself in something completely detached from not just your everyday life, but from everybody’s mundane normality. There’s a shared story that we come together to play a part of, like we’re all puzzle pieces fitting into a grand, epic picture. It’s pure escapism, sure, but it’s exciting and a hell of a lot more motivating than trying to write your own novel (which might be part of the PROBLEM, but that’s another story).

Science Fiction + Fantasy Short Film Festival 2013

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Charles Spurr

I am sad to say that this past weekend was my first time attending the Science Fiction + Fantasy Short Film Festival even though it is now in its eighth year. Never again will I miss this local event if I can help it. The film festival (#SFFSFF) was four hours (plus a 90 minute intermission) of absolutely magical delight. I cannot thank the EMP Museum and SIFF enough for putting it on. The 21 shorts ranged from serious to LOL funny to downright frightening through formats including live action, animation, and puppets. Seriously, there was a short featuring puppets voiced by Christopher Lloyd and Elijah Wood. If ever there was a crowd that Dorkadia needed to spend time with, this was it. While the short films were all fantastic, I’ll go over a handful of my absolute favorites here. Continue reading

Timecrop – At Least 5 Good Time Travel Movies

Posted on January 23, 2013 by Nick Bergeron

Wyld Stallyns Rule!

In the last two weeks no less than three separate people on my Facebook friends list have asked about good time travel movies. It’s easily one of the most common tropes in science-fiction, and it’s so often done wrong that finding good examples can be a challenge. Giant plot holes, unacknowledged paradoxes, and just plain bad writing and acting destroy most films before you even have a chance to think about them. And that’s really where the fun in time travel movies lies – the long hours of trying to work through the labyrinthine plots they weave. So, to help you navigate the seas of shitty sci-fi, I’ve compiled a list of my five of my favorite time travel movies. Continue reading

Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, Is it Enough?

Posted on January 22, 2013 by Jon Spengler

My fondest PC gaming memories are playing single player games tag-team with my best friend 15-some years ago. It’s easy to be nostalgic about a time when personal computing itself had limitless possibilities. I fondly remember sitting in my friend’s basement eating Campbell’s soup out of microwavable bowls, both of us huddled around his computer playing BioWare‘s Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale series. Exploring those Forgotten Realms together was an experience that had a meaningful impact on my hobbies as an adult.

You can imagine my excitement when I found out that Overhaul Games announced Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition. They promised to keep the eccentric 2nd Edition D&D rules and the 2d Infinity Engine but with added stability, modernization, and new content. But the original Baldur’s Gate is already available through other means, like Good Old Games. Is Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition offer enough to make it worth the $20 price tag? Continue reading

Author Archives: Guy Gavriel Kay

Posted on January 21, 2013 by Reuben Poling

Someone’s gonna get their shit Vik’d up.

I was talking to my dad not too long ago about a book on medieval history we’d both read, and he brought up the fact that he rarely reads fiction. “History’s more interesting,” he said, “and usually more unbelievable.” I don’t agree, but there’s a point there that applies especially well to fantasy – there is a vast wealth of Cool Shit That Actually Happened out there, and if you mine it carefully you can write one hell of a story. Continue reading

The Crisis on Infinite MMOs! – A DC Universe Online Review

Posted on January 18, 2013 by Hannah Craig

I’m…NOT Batman!

Super hero MMOs have a hard playing field to break onto. City of Heroes, the benchmark super hero MMO, was incredibly popular, boasting a very dedicated fanbase and positive word of mouth for years. It had excellent character creation for its time, a wide variety of powers and even a modular UI that a lot of MMOs could stand to look back at and emulate instead of letting modders do the work for them. A lot of the most popular MMOs, dating back to Everquest and Asheron’s Call, stay in the fantasy genre (though they flirt with scifi elements, such as WoW’s dimension traveling goats). So when an MMO wants to place itself in a less fantastical setting, it has a harder time removing itself from the Second Life stigma.

DCUO does this by setting itself so firmly in DC Comics that when you load up the game for the first time it’s a little hard that tell you haven’t just loaded Arkham Asylum by mistake.